Making the Peers' Subjective Well-being Visible Impairs Cooperator-centered Experimental Social Networks
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Published on: November 19, 2015
Akihiro Nishi1, Hiroyasu Ando2, Meaghan Woody3
1Department of Epidemiology, University of California, Los Angeles, California, 90095, USA.
Abstract:
Past experiments show that reputation or the knowledge of peers' past cooperation can enhance cooperation in human social networks. On the other hand, the knowledge of peers' wealth undermines cooperativeness, and that of peers' interconnectedness and network structure does not affect it. However, it is unknown if making peers' subjective well-being (SWB) available or visible in social networks influences cooperativeness or alters network structure. Therefore, we implemented online network experiments (N = 662 in 50 networked groups with 15 rounds of interactions), in which study participants cooperated with or defected against connected peers through Public Goods Game, made and cut social ties with others, and rated their SWB. We manipulated the visibility of connected peers' SWB (25 visible vs. 25 invisible SWB networked groups) while keeping the connected peers' reputation and in-game wealth visible. Results show that making the peers' SWB visible did not alter overall cooperativeness, wealth, inter-connectedness, or SWB. In contrast, groups in the visible SWB condition displayed a different pattern of decision-making: they were less likely to form homophilous connections (links between individuals with the same cooperate/defect choice). Compared to groups in the invisible SWB condition, these groups also exhibited lower cooperator transitivity (the proportion of cases in which a peer's peer is also a peer) and lower cooperator eigenvector centrality.
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